Forum On City's Future Gets A Pittsburgh View

A city's image is important, but not nearly as vital as having an employed work force, said a man who helped get Pittsburgh working again after the steel industry died.

Frank Brooks Robinson, president of Pittsburgh's Regional Industrial Development Corp., said his city doesn't spend millions of dollars trying to change the world's perception of Pittsburgh. Instead, it has spent its money bringing technology out of the research labs of its universities and into new jobs.

As a result, the city's renaissance is something of a secret.

"My image of Hartford is a lot better than your image of Pittsburgh," said Robinson, who spoke Wednesday morning at the "Hartford in Perspective" forum at the Old State House.

The Regional Industrial Development Corp., formed in 1955, is a nonprofit partnership of business and government that promotes development of new businesses. Like speakers from other cities who preceded him during the last five weeks of the forum, Robinson stressed the importance of such public-private partnerships.

"The partnership theme that you've heard from everyone is absolutely fundamental," he said.

Pittsburgh had the country's first public-private partnership, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, formed in the mid-1940s and still in existence. The conference, first formed by the Carnegie Institute of Technology, merged the interests of Republican industrialists with those of a powerful Democratic city administration.

Two individuals helped kick-start the city's improvements during the 1940s -- Mayor David Lawrence and industrialist Richard K. Mellon, an alliance that Robinson said saved the city.

But he warned that the day of powerful leaders making unilateral decisions may be over.

"The world has changed now," he said. "We've moved more toward a society of leaders rather than individuals."

Robinson also stressed the importance of the word "regional" in his group's name.

Pittsburgh's revitalization goes beyond downtown, he said.

"In Hartford, you should define a region that goes beyond the city limits and beyond traditional manufacturers," he said. He

urged his listeners to find the engine that fuels the region, then focus on it.

The Greater Hartford Chamber of Commerce is working to create a regional economic development group that would work to keep businesses in the Hartford area as well as attract companies from other parts of the country. The group is still in the planning stage.

In Pittsburgh, when the steel mills closed, the city looked to its universities for help in creating new industries in applied technology. The partnerships spawned research that led to the development of new companies and jobs in applied technology.

Robinson's advice is to not wait for companies to relocate here. "You'll wait too long for that brass ring," he said.

The Pittsburgh region has focused on creating its own new companies, using its own resources and strengths so that the companies will not be easily lured away, he said.